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Google's Growing Love For the Mac

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-multi-color-apple dept.

An anonymous reader writes "While browsing the 2007 Macworld speaker bios, I found an interesting Google+Mac piece of news. Looks like Google has appointed the famous Amit Singh in charge of their Mac Engineering (also confirmed on Singh's website). While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility they have been offering some native Mac software. We earlier heard Google CEO Eric Schmidt's joining Apple's board of directors. Then following Microsoft MacBU's lead, Google started their own Mac Blog a few weeks earlier. Google's jobs website also lists several Mac openings. If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google. Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming? ;-)"

6 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yes, but where's Google Desktop? by saha · · Score: 2, Informative

    That would seem really redundant. One could argue Apple's Spotlight is better than Google Desktop because it is more extensible to multiple file formats (allows developers to write plug-ins). Spotlight was indexing more file formats before Google Desktop first version. Spotlight will index a document up to 10MB, Google indexes only the first 5,000 words in a file, while MSN indexes one megabyte. Also Dominic Giampaolo who created BFS for BeOS, shortly worked in Google and now Apple developing Spotlight to work on top of HFS+. I like Picasa on Windows, because it is light weight and fast, but Google probably realizes that iPhoto does a decent job. There are features on both sides that I like, but iPhoto on the Mac is good enough and probably why Google won't have Picasa until iPhoto becomes a slow and lumber behemoth program.

  2. Mac Apps, Partition software, etc by green+pizza · · Score: 2, Informative

    You might be interested in iPartition. It's not free, but it's more flexible than /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. There are others, but this is the only one that quickly comes to mind. Don't bother asking Powerquest/Symantic to make a Mac version of Partiton Magic, ports of existing Windows utilities generally suck on other platforms.
    http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

    As for other Mac Applications, there are several websites you can check out for various Mac apps. I have never found a shortage of Mac (or Linux) applications, once I avoided the pitfall of finding a "port" or "perfect replacement" for my favorite Windows applications. Things are a little different in the Mac and Linux world, so you might need to find similar, but significantly different applications to meet your needs.

    Check out:
    http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
    http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
    http://www.macorchard.com/
    http://www.macupdate.com/
    And if you want games:
    http://aspyr.com/product/product_listing
    http://www.destineerstudios.com/macsoftgames/mac_l isting.html
    http://www.feral.co.uk/
    http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/all.html
    http://www.pangeasoft.net/index2.html
    http://www.freeverse.com/
    http://www.apple.com/games/
    http://www.macgamefiles.com/

  3. Wither indie devs already bridging the gap? by saddino · · Score: 3, Informative
    If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google.

    Although Singh's hiring is definitely a step in the right direction concerning Google's commitment to the Mac, it's been a long time coming. In the meantime, independent Mac developers have already started writing tools and utilities that bridge the gap between OS X and Google. Just a few examples (the first being a shameless plug, natch):
    • Amnesty Generator – converts Google web page hosted gadgets into Dashboard widgets.
    • Google Maps Plugin – integrates Apple Address Book with Google Maps and Google Earth.
    • Dashalytics – gives you quick access to prettified Google Analytics stats in a widget.
    • Spanning Sync – syncs iCal with Google Calendar.

    I suppose the real question is: does Google's newfound enthusiasm for OS X simply mean rewriting all these existing tools in-house?
  4. NeXTSTEP 8 by DECS · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are forgetting that NeXTSTEP has improved at Apple. It was at v 4 when Apple bought NeXT in the final days of 1996.

    Rhapsody, 10.0, 10.1 = v 5
    10.2 = v 6
    10.3 = v 7
    10.4 Tiger = v 8

    10.5 Leopard = v 9

    Mac OS X gets the ten from its legacy of Mac versions leading up to it, but Apple uses the NeXTSTEP version numbering system to version Darwin, the core OS. The major version of ten indicates the version of the new platform (i.e. Tiger's Darwin is v 8, and todays' 10.4.8 is Darwin 8.8).

    So when you see the version number system for Mac OS X, every number has meaning:

    Tiger 10.4.8=

    10th generation of Mac system software
    4th major revision of this generation's platform, and the n revision of NeXTSTEP + 4 = 8th generation of NeXT's NS based platform.
    8th minor revision.

  5. Is this a troll? by Slur · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are factually wrong on several points:

    Single-user mode: Very easy, just hold down COMMAND-S at startup. With applejack installed repairs can be very quick. In a pinch archive-and-installing the system gets you back to where you were very quickly, preserving settings.

    Context menus: Actually Mac uses them all over the place now, and they are comprehensive.

    Mac Consistency: You're completely wrong about application behavior. For all applications, not just the Finder, only the clicked-on window comes to the front. An application that uses PALETTES (like Photoshop) shows them when one of its windows is active. The key-combination to hide apps is COMMAND-H for all apps that don't override it for legacy reasons. Adobe apps traditionally use Cmd-H for "Extras" so they change the hide key to COMMAND-CONTROL-H. In any case, you can always COMMAND-OPTION-CLICK any Dock icon to hide all other apps. Icons appearing under the Dock: It's so easy to avoid. Put the Dock on the side of the screen and make it smaller for the best experience.

    Linux is getting better all the time though, I agree with that.

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media
  6. Re:All for it. by macs4all · · Score: 2, Informative
    No, there's absolutely NO support for PIC programming in OS X:

    http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20. 02/PICMicrocontroller/index.html

    http://polarfront.org/archives/000537.html

    http://blog.paddlefish.net/archives/2004/12/usb_pi ckit_tool.html

    http://robrohan.com/projects/PIConOSX/

    http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/011123 8

    http://www.teammojo.org/PICkit/pickit1.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPUTILS

    http://lawlor.cs.uaf.edu/~olawlor/projects/2003/mi crochip/

    http://www.gnupic.org/